Sunday, January 31, 2016

Staunton, January 31 – “Putin would
like to see himself as Stalin in the company of Churchill and Roosevelt at
Yalta,” Azimbay Gali says; but “Putin is not Stalin. He is half-Khrushchev and
half-Gorbachev” – and both that split in his perception and reality and that
division within himself is likely to have a profound impact on Russia’s future.

According to the Kazakh historian, “the
West will try to categorically not to allow” a new Yalta,” although “a united
West will foot Putin by periodically offering Russia a summit and then putting
off one like that.” Over time, “the long-suffering quality of the Russian
people could end” before any such meeting could occur (centrasia.ru/news.php?st=1454229240).

In an earlier article, Gali argued
that Russia is “on the eve of Perestroika-2 or a Russian time of troubles” (openrussia.org/post/view/12452/).
But in this one, explicitly offered as a test of the hypotheses he proposed
earlier, the historian suggests that one should not rush to judgment about any
radical change.

He
argues that “at the present moment there is not observed what one might call a
revolutionary situation.” The authorities are in clear control, and “the
dissatisfaction of the population is local and fragmented; and the
dissatisfaction of ethnic elites also bears a local character.”

Russians
are now focused on economic issues – how to survive in the current economic
crisis – rather than political ones; but “no one knows how big a resource the
long-suffering quality of the Russian people is.”It is likely to continue for some time before
it snaps, just as was the case in World War I.

But
the signs that the current war could have the impact the first world war did
are not in evidence, Gali says.Unlike
90 years ago, there is no fraternization on the Russian-Ukrainian front.” Up to
now, television programs of both Ukraine and Russia are successfully promoting
mutual alienation.”

One
trend that is worth watching, the Kazakh historian suggests is that “Russians
have become more sensitive to military losses and are tired of war,” but
despite the impact of the Internet, this has “not yet achieved critical mass.”Until it does, the war won’t create a
revolutionary situation in Rusisa.

According
to Gali, the US and the EU want to drive Russia toward economic collapse,
isolate Russia economically, split Russia from its remaining allies, promote
the idea of a second perestroika, and make Russians more sensitive to military
losses. If they succeed, Russia “cannot conduct a serious and long-term war
even with a ravaged Ukraine.”

In
response, Putin has countered by isolating Russia from the West economically
and himself from the leaders of the West, something that has narrowed his “field
for geopolitical maneuver.”Second, he
has sparked a new discussion about what Russia’s domestic and foreign policy
should be via his new “concept” papers.

In
foreign policy, the Kazakh analyst says, the Kremlin leader has promoted the unrealizable
idea that Russia can be a dominant player “in the club of great powers,” and he
has presented as his country’s right to dispose of everything across the entire
post-Soviet space “from the Baltics to Turkmenistan.”

And
in a subject that links domestic policy to this foreign policy vision, Putin
has made it clear that for him “Stalin remains a villain but Lenin is worse.”
If one considers this in the broadest terms, it is clear that this is “a
perestroika-like concept, and this concept has destructive force for Russia”
just as the original one did.

In
this situation, Gali argues, analysts and commentators should stop thinking
that Putin is the Stalin of today. In fact, he is “half Khrushchev and half
Gorbachev,” a combination that in fact means that what the current incumbent of
the Kremlin hopes to achieve he is, by his own policies, making all but
impossible.